Short Trip Down a Long Road
by K Hanna Korossy
Summary: Asylum tag fic: Sam had really missed him. Not that, you know, Dean had doubted it.


**Short Trip Down a Long Road**  
K Hanna Korossy

He never did find out exactly what it was, only what it did. It was definitely one of the weirder things Dean Winchester would ever come across in his career as hunter. And he didn't even realize it when he walked right into it.

He was walking because the IHOP was just across the street from the motel, because it was lunchtime and Dean was in the mood for pancakes, and because the room had grown suffocatingly small. It was doing that a lot those days. Not because Sam had left, taking off on him, for his little brother had also come back and just in time. Not even because Dean still held the whole asylum thing against him. He was fair enough to know that hadn't been Sam's fault. His brother would never even have been exposed to Ellicott if Dean hadn't split them up, and then if Sam hadn't been trying to run to his rescue despite his better sense. No, Dean's battered chest was a reminder of a different kind of pain, something that hurt more than rankled. Sam would never have wanted to shoot him, but those words…

They seemed to suck the air out of all the rooms they stayed in since Rockford, and Dean had found himself taking a lot of walks. Even Sam's sad eyes when Dean would announce he was going was worth the few moments of let-your-guard-down peace. Dean still was in pain, and it had nothing to do with the peppered bruising on his chest that always made Sam pale to glimpse.

Dean stepped up on the curb, the IHOP just a strip of grass away now.

And felt the shiver of an almost electric charge pass through him.

Dean winced, hand automatically going to his chest. Any kind of jolt still pulled at tender flesh, and this had zinged across raw nerves with a shock. But it had passed as quickly as it had come, leaving him apparently whole and as healthy as he'd been. Dean shrugged, kept going.

Hadn't it been sunnier a minute before? He glanced up at the sky, surprised to see the sun in its downward curve, not far from the horizon. Dean checked his watch—nearly one—and frowned. Maybe they'd crossed a time zone or two without him realizing. Sometimes it was hard to keep up with them. Or his watch battery could be running low. There was a drugstore down the street they could hit before they left town if necessary.

The pancake house was unusually quiet for lunchtime, but maybe this was a too out-of-the-way location. At least he got his food quickly, and Dean didn't complain as he gathered the warm, sweet-smelling bag and headed back to the room. He'd gotten some of Sam's favorites; Rockford had taken its toll on both of them, and Sam had been eating even less than he usually did. Time for them to both snap out of their funk, because Dean missed the spark that had reignited between them the last few months.

Assuming Sam wanted that, too. Doubt had set down some roots in Dean's mind, and was proving almost impossible to shake free. Maybe because what Sam had said was true and Dean was duping himself thinking otherwise, but he'd always been a desperate optimist. He knew Sam didn't need him as much as he needed his little brother, but Dean had thought at least the same love and respect were there. _Pathetic _was a hard word to explain away, though, and his heart shied from thinking about it too much. Better to walk away when the memories grew too stifling, and hope time would heal what they couldn't seem to. Dean had always been about hope.

He crossed the street, steps slowing when he realized the Impala wasn't parked in front of the room where he'd left it. He frowned, annoyed that whatever errand Sam had gone on couldn't have waited until Dean's return. The car at least was still his, and usually Sam borrowed instead of took. But then, a lot had changed that past week.

Dean rattled the key in the lock irritably, and stalked inside.

He stopped, a prickle of disquiet running across his shoulder blades and down his back.

"What the—?"

The room was wrecked. Not monster-jumping-out-of-the-closet kind of wrecked, but hard-living kind of wrecked. The state his room had been when his dad had disappeared, before Dean finally went and got Sam. The remains of desperation.

Sam's bed was rumpled and piled with a layer of paper. Dean's was neatly made, but half the contents of the Impala's trunk were strewn over its covers. The table was also coated with papers, and a few empty coffee cups. The laptop was on, a notebook in front of it open to a page full of scrawled notes.

Dean absently set the IHOP bag down on the floor by the door and moved further on, taking in details as he went. The bathroom was empty but smelled faintly of…vomit? The shower was dry. There was some bloody gauze in the sink, and just as Dean stiffened, he found the source: blood-limned shards of glass in the trashcan, remnants of one of the motel's complementary glasses. There was a suspicious indentation on the wall by the bathroom door, and the sparkle of a few tiny fragments still embedded in the carpet. The room's trash can overflowed with paper, and as Dean shuffled through it, staring uncomprehendingly at print-outs and notes on phantom attackers and thin-air disappearances and spatial rifts, the rippled spots on one caught his eye. Water drops…or tear stains. He recognized them from a few pages of his dad's journal where John had written about their mother.

"Okay, this is…not good," Dean murmured. What had happened there? And in the whole fifteen minutes he'd been gone, no less?

Dean's eyes strayed automatically to the clock by the bed. It said nearly six. Had he lost a few hours, blacked out or something? But surely Sam would have come looking for him—you could see the IHOP from their door. And Dean's own watch still insisted it was just after one. Dean stared around the room for another moment, unease growing with every breath, and reached into his pocket for his cell phone. He dialed Sam.

Across the room, somewhere under all the papers on Sam's bed, came the answering ring.

Dean scowled, flipping the phone off. "Third rule of hunting, Sam—you always take your phone," he growled, and rammed the useless cell back into his pocket. Fine, they'd just have to do this the hard way.

Dean skirted the table and sat stiffly in the chair in front of the laptop, bringing it out of sleep mode as he started to scan the page of longhand notes in front of it. Or nine pages, actually, he shook his head in disbelief as he flipped through the notebook. It was Sam's handwriting, only a quicker and dirtier version, as if he'd been…

Desperate. Dean kept coming back to that word. The room was practically screaming it.

"What went down here, bro?" he murmured, looking for highlights, clues to where Sam was, and finding only more notes like those in the trashcan, along with paragraphs about spectral implosions, possession, and some really cheerful ones on spontaneous disintegration. "Something you're not telling me, Sam?"

The browser came back to life on the laptop, still opened to the last site: Mapquest. A map and directions. Dean's eyebrows rose. Simple as that?

"Huh. Cool." Dean shrugged, wrote the address down, and checked out the distance. Three-point-five miles. Terrific. And if Sam needed back-up as badly as it was looking he did, Dean didn't have time to walk.

He glanced at the notebook one more time, then at the paper scattered around him. Sam was working on a puzzle like his life depended on it, but Dean was starting to get the soft suspicion it wasn't his own life Sam had been so vehemently trying to save.

He had to get to his brother.

Dean collected a few weapons and tools he tucked out of sight, then was out the door. If his chest ached at the sudden movement, he didn't even feel it.

There was a bus depot up the street, and just as Dean expected, several taxis were waiting at the entrance. He climbed in the nearest one and rattled off the address he'd memorized from the laptop, then settled back impatiently to wait.

Implosions. Vanishings. Rifts. Maybe Sam hadn't been the one who had disappeared?

Dean leaned forward stiffly and peered over the taxi driver's shoulder at his fare sheet. The date was written at the top.

And felt his breath go cold as he reeled back in the seat. It was the twenty-first. Sunday? Six days after Dean had stepped out of the room less than an hour before. But…

But nothing. He'd lost six days. Sam had lost _him_ for six days.

No wonder the room screamed with his desperation.

Dean leaned forward again and said with clenched jaw, "Step on it."

He'd expected a building at the address, maybe a library or city hall. Not a residential house, blue and white and cozy, indistinguishable from the others on the street except for the black car that was parked in front of it. Not even down the street like they'd been taught; either Sam was slipping or he didn't care. Dean eyed the house, already considering points of entry, as he paid the driver.

He needn't have bothered. The front door was unlocked.

Dean slipped inside, fingers wrapped around the butt of the gun he had tucked inside his waistband. There was a distant sound of voices, and he crept silently down a dim hallway, checking rooms as he went but focused on the sound. The voice. Sam's voice. Yelling.

There didn't seem to be anyone on the main floor, and the floor above was silent. Dean glanced around the buttercup yellow kitchen, then slipped through the basement door, down the steps.

Dean grew quiet and intense when furious, anger coiled and just waiting for the right moment to be unleashed. Sam tended to explode, all wild energy and flailing arms that misled you into thinking he was all bark and no bite, right until one of those crazy gestures suddenly turned lethal. Dean had learned to respect his little brother's anger, not so different from his own despite appearances.

Now, the sound and fury buffeted a small man who was pressed against the far wall of the basement, eyes rounded as they stared at Sam. The effect was comical, like a Chihuahua cowering in front of a Great Dane, except these eyes held a glitter of evil. Even anguished, Sam didn't lash out at innocents, researching and tracking his quarry with an intensity that belied his apparent lack of control. If Sam was in this guy's face, the guy probably deserved it, and Dean slipped his hand out of his jacket, gun firmly in his grasp as he slipped a little closer.

And then Dean heard what his brother was saying.

"Undo it. Undo it right now or, I swear, I will kill you right where you stand."

"I can't!" the little man spat back. "Even if I could, I wouldn't—they all got what they deserved. But I can't control it."

Long fingers wrapped around the lapel of the man's shirt, pressing him tighter against the wall, then, as Dean sucked in a breath, slid up to his neck. Sam, the ethical boy scout, was ready to choke the guy—a human?—with his bare hands. His voice, trembling with emotion, held a cold sharpness Dean cringed to hear. "Try, or you'll get what _you_ deserve. He was my—"

"Sam!" Dean barked. He'd heard more than enough.

Sam froze. Stopped breathing, it seemed. Dean saw a shudder go through the lean back.

"Sammy," he softened his tone but made it no less imperative. "Let him go."

Sam did, although Dean figured it was an automatic gesture as his brother turned to face him.

He should have been prepared for the sight, but the belligerent part of him that clung to those hateful words in Rockford had lulled him. This frayed-at-the-edges version of his brother, eyes raw with loss and grief and exhaustion, stunned Dean into silence. The Specter of Death had vanished, leaving just one battered little brother in its wake.

Well, at least Dean knew how to handle those.

But first, the creepy little guy who was watching them like they were a Broadway show or something. "How'd you do it?" Dean focused on him, giving Sam a needed moment to pull himself together.

The man didn't answer, but his eyes slid involuntarily to one side.

Dean's gaze followed, to the table piled with old books and some of the familiar tools of their trade. It wasn't quite an altar, but the melted candles and chalice and painted sigils spoke of forces he knew better than to mess with. Dean's gaze darted back to Sam, warming in a moment of silent compassion and _hold it together a little longer, bro, _before he asked him in a completely different voice, "Guy's not a closet demon or anything, right? Nothing we can waste?"

Sam shook his head numbly. No irony in the fact he'd been threatening to do just that. His eyes hadn't left Dean's face, and they glittered even in the dim light of the basement bulb. His hair, uncombed and unruly, didn't do a thing to hide their haunted expression.

Dean sighed. "Well, that sucks. I brought my sanctified bullets and everything."

Nobody was reacting to the humor. Tough crowd.

Dean watched Sam a moment longer, then turned away and canted his head as he considered the table again. "Do you need any of this stuff, Sam?" He could feel the silent shake of the head behind him, and the tremor that followed it. "That makes things easier." Dean glanced around, locating a half-open bottle of beer on a nearby chair, and grabbed it, shaking the contents onto the table.

Behind him, the man gave a strangled gasp.

Dean turned back, mouth pulling into a mirthless smile. "What? You got something to say?"

A look at Sam invited him to share the joke, but Sam was too shaky to be tracking words, let alone jokes just then. Dean sobered, and dug his lighter out. A flick ignited one of the candles, and then Dean, glancing back for that perfect reaction shot, tipped it over with one finger.

"Oops."

The guy cried out and lunged forward as the flame caught on the alcohol and spread, up the sides of the books.

Sam's hand shot out and slammed him back against the wall without even looking at him. His eyes had finally moved from Dean to the fire.

Dean grinned, glad to see any change. He stared at Sam long enough that his brother reacted, meeting his gaze. And finally, finally, the hard line of Sam's mouth softened. It was more of a grimace than a smile, but, hey, Dean apparently hadn't seen it in six days and he wasn't going to complain.

The books were burning merrily now, black smoke curling from them. There was a litany of desperate denial from over by the wall, but they both ignored it. Dean waited until the books and painted table were fully engaged, unsalvageable, then nodded back at Sam, who let go of the guy.

"Dude, you should probably put that out before it spreads," Dean said solicitously. "You really oughta be more careful next time when playing with fire." It was said with an earnest nod that earned him a daggered look. Dean shrugged, turning to his brother. "Sam? We done here?"

Sam's head wobbled up and down.

"Great. I left the food back at the room and it's gotta be completely cold by now."

"Food?" Without rage to power it, Sam's voice just sounded small and bewildered.

Dean closed most of the gap between them and reached out for a firm fistful of Sam's jacket. He tugged lightly, gratified when Sam started moving. Dean kept half an eye on the guy, now frantically trying to smother the fire with a blanket and too busy to pay any attention to them. The rest of Dean's attention was all on his brother, as Sam clung to Dean's arm and followed him up the stairs and out.

Sam blinked vampirically even in the twilight, and Dean used his disorientation as excuse to stretch an arm around the shaking back and lead him along.

The bench seat wasn't adjusted back, like Sam usually did when he drove, and the radio was turned off. Dean didn't remark on that, or the streak of blood on the steering wheel—he'd noticed the tattered bandage around Sam's hand—or the blanket and pillow shoved into the corner of the back seat. It would be ammo for future teasing, but not while Sam looked so…breakable.

Sam had given up the staring, face buried in one hand now, but the other hand gripped Dean's shoulder with bruising intensity. Dean wasn't about to complain.

He waited for the first question, but it didn't seem forthcoming. Dean finally cleared his throat. "So…six days, huh?"

Sam's hand fell away from his face, and he nodded in utter weariness. His voice sounded roughshod as he finally responded, "Where were you?"

"Dude," Dean snorted, "I wasn't gone. I went to IHOP and back, that's it. It's like I stepped out of Monday and into Sunday—next time_you're _getting lunch."

Sam's forehead faintly wrinkled. "Like some sort of…time dilation?" he finally asked.

Dean opened his mouth, frowned, shut it again, and finally shrugged. "Sure, whatever."

A deep breath and finally a sideways look. "So, you're okay?"

"Hungry, but…" Dean glanced over, smiled. "I'm good. You, on the other hand—"

Sam's hand tightened in an urgent plea not to go there, and Dean tapered off. It could wait. Same with who the guy was whose house he'd just nearly burned down. The end of six days of fear would take a while to sink in, so for now he let Sam cling.

Sam had regained a little of his equilibrium by the time they reached the motel, although he swayed as he climbed out of the car and didn't protest when Dean grabbed his elbow. Considering he'd had to pry his hand from Dean's shoulder before they got out, they were probably still in the "If I let you go, you might disappear" stage, where personal space became a non-issue. Dean led the way inside, and to Sam's bed, where one snap of the blankets caused a snowfall of paper. Sam's mouth twitched.

"You know how long it took me to put that together?"

"Six days?" Dean hazarded a guess.

Sam's smile disappeared.

Dean nudged him down to sit on the edge of the bed, and cleared some of the weapons off his own bed so he could mirror the move. They sat with knees brushing, Sam's face now buried in two hands until one dropped blindly into his lap, palm up. Dean took it in a loose handshake Sam immediately tightened, and gauged temperature and pulse if they were going to be doing the touching thing anyway. Sam wasn't going into shock at least. Probably just worn out, if the circles under his eyes and the loaded beds were any indication. And emotional workouts could be as exhausting as physical.

They sat that way in silence for a long time. Dean stopped trying to read his brother's mind, and his gaze ambled over the room again instead. Heck of a lot of work there. No less than he would have done if the tables had been turned, but still, some part of his mind couldn't help see the implications. You didn't work that hard and look that devastated for someone you didn't think much of.

"Those disappearances we've been looking into?"

Sam's voice broke off his thoughts, and Dean looked back at his brother. Sam still sat hunched over, talking into his lap. "Yeah?"

"Hanover caused them."

"Hanover," Dean repeated. "That's the guy with the basement out of _Black Arts for Dummies_."

Sam nodded heavily. His hand twitched in Dean's grasp. The other was curled in his lap, its soiled bandage needing changing.

Dean frowned and leaned forward, his breath stirring those long bangs. "So…why didn't the other people come back, too?"

"One did, four days later. Day…" Sam made a soft chuffing sound. "Day two for you. I thought it was just one of the spells going bad," he said hopelessly, and pushed himself up to look at Dean with sore-looking, red-rimmed eyes. "Apparently, these…time events or whatever they are that Hanover cooked up out of a spell book, last for different amounts of time. The other two people might show up tomorrow."

"Or ten years from now," Dean said quietly.

"Maybe. But since you two came back so fast, I would think soon." Sam dragged his injured hand over his face and up into his hair, wincing. "If you would have showed up any later…"

Dean bent a little lower to meet his eyes. "You wouldn't have killed him, Sam."

"I might have," he said tonelessly. "I thought you were dead, so…yeah, I was thinking about it."

"No way," Dean shook his head, "You're too straight-arrow. You don't kill people."

Sam's shoulders hitched. "Yeah, maybe." Another hollow laugh. "I don't seem to have any problem with threatening them, though."

They were back to Rockford. Dean had a sudden dread that everything would be full circle back to that damned asylum from now on, every misstep and falter and sarcastic comment. That if the demon and their dad's absence and their dangerous life didn't tear them up, they would it do it themselves.

Dean looked at the bowed head, his brother defeated by his presence when when he'd refused to be in Dean's absence. And felt only love for the kid.

"Sam, listen to me. This is how it's gonna be." Sam's downcast head tilted, paying attention. "You're gonna go take a shower because, bro, you're wrecking my appetite here. I'll rewrap your hand after. Then we'll sit down and eat cold pancakes and sausage. I'm still hungry, and you're turning into a poster child for some kind of refugee charity, man." Sam was looking up at him, bloodshot and pale but with a stirring of life in his eyes. "And then before you go to bed and sleep for the next twelve hours, we're sitting down and you're going to tell me all about Hanover and hotwiring a car in Indiana and what happened with Ellicott."

Sam was staring at him, face a conflict of emotion. "I thought you didn't want to hear about it," he said softly. Sam had tried to talk, until he'd finally gotten the hint, but talking things out so Sam would feel better was always a whole other story from talking to help Dean.

"I don't want to hear the word 'sorry' in there. Ever, okay? But the rest…" Dean squirmed. "Yeah, all right? I changed my mind." He could believe it now, he didn't add. Big brothers had images to maintain and the utter denseness of this one wasn't something he was proud of.

Sam chuckled wearily. "Is that all?"

"'Course not." Dean looked at him seriously, then lifted a shoulder. "Spurs v. Mavs, dude. Wednesday. I don't even know who won."

Sam laughed like it hurt. Dean pulled him up, gave him a quick hug that was returned with a fervor that stole his breath, then he steered Sam toward the bathroom.

"So how many times did Pamela Sue Anderson get married while I was gone? And, oh, man, I missed _CSI_—that better have been a rerun. How 'bout my car? Did you take care of her while I was—"

"Dean?" Sam's scratched velvet voice cut in without even trying.

"Yeah?"

"Shut up."

**The End**


End file.
